One hundred million pigs are killed for food every year in the U.S. Breeding pigs on factory farms are confined to stalls barely larger than their own bodies. Sometimes the stalls are stacked, and excrement from pigs in upper tiers falls on those below. The stench of ammonia is often overpowering even for farmers, who spend only minutes a day in the pig buildings. (Pig farmers commonly suffer from a variety of respiratory problems, including bronchitis, asthma-like conditions, and inflamed sinuses.) Lack of exercise causes pigs to become so weak that they can barely walk 50 yards. At the slaughterhouse, workers jab metal hooks into pigs’ eyes, mouths, or rectums to force them to move faster.
Breeding sows are impregnated several times during their short lives and chained in narrow metal stalls called gestation crates. During their 15-week pregnancies, the sows are kept in the dark and fed only every third day. While nursing, they are held practically immobile in stalls with no room to turn around or to properly care for their babies. The piglets are whisked away within a few weeks to become bacon or breeders.

Convicted: Texas County pig farm worker Alejo Peña pleaded to three counts of felony cruelty to animals stemming from a PETA undercover investigation videotape showing Peña, manager of the Seaboard Farms, Inc.-owned pig farm, mercilessly bludgeoning pigs with iron gate rods in three separate incidents. This is the first time in U.S. history that a farmer has pleaded to felony cruelty to animals for injuring and killing animals raised for food . On May 14, 2001, PETA submitted the video to Texas County District Attorney Donald E. Wood, whose office filed charges against Peña on August 31. A fourth count, relating to a dying pig who had been left to suffer without receiving veterinary care or euthanasia, was dropped.

Rue McClanahan, an Oklahoma native and star of the popular TV series The Golden Girls , wrote to Donald Wood last August, imploring him to vigorously prosecute Peña. McClanahan offered to narrate PETA’s video of the beatings after viewing it and being moved to tears.

"No matter which pig farm we enter, we find animals in abject misery, their torment almost unimaginable," says PETA Senior Vice President Mary Beth Sweetland. "This time law-enforcement officials refused to excuse the cruel beatings of these intelligent animals or to consider them simply business-as-usual."

Texas County pig farm worker Alejo Peña pleaded to three counts of felony cruelty to animals stemming from a PETA undercover investigation videotape showing Peña, manager of the Seaboard Farms, Inc.-owned pig farm, mercilessly bludgeoning pigs with iron gate rods in three separate incidents. This is the first time in U.S. history that a farmer has pleaded to felony cruelty to animals for injuring and killing animals raised for food. On May 14, 2001, PETA submitted the video to Texas County District Attorney Donald E. Wood, whose office filed charges against Peña on August 31.
Employees at Seaboard, North America’s third largest pork producer, were caught on video routinely throwing, beating, kicking, slamming against concrete floors, and bludgeoning animals with metal gate rods and hammers. Other pigs were left to die slow and agonizing deaths with severe injuries, illness, and lameness, often unable to reach food or water, without even a trace of veterinary care despite the fact that Peña was fully aware of their conditions.

In 1999, in North Carolina, the first-ever felony indictments for cruelty to animals on a factory farm in the U.S. were issued against 3 workers after a PETA investigation into a pig breeding facility called Belcross Farm. In that case, all three workers were convicted for their parts in the beating and bludgeoning of pigs, including the skinning of a sow who was still fully conscious.

Both of these cases and subsequent charges represent a growing awareness for the suffering of animals on factory farms and serve as a clear reminder for the need to help directly alleviate such suffering by adopting a vegetarian diet.

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Source: Peta.org
NOTE: The article has been edited.